Participants were asked to upload their photos in October and November 2017, and all African countries were welcome to participate. With local teams in participating countries on hand to introduce the site to local photographers, the competition resulted in 18,294 image uploads to Commons around the theme “People at Work”.

The photo contest entries went under review by a panel of photographic experts from around the world, and now, the jury has identified and announced three winners.

First place in the global jury prize went to Cape Town-based freelance photographer Yann Macherez who decided to spend an afternoon with his camera and seaweed farmers in Jambiani—a village on the southeast coast of Zanzibar.

Before farming seaweed was an option, many women in rural coastal communities were completely dependent on their husbands for their livelihoods. Today, women have found emancipation and an access to freedom because of this ‘gift’. According to Wikimedia Foundation, Macherez was quoted saying

] that he wanted to learn: “the way they were farming it, what they did with their crop, and why they called it a “gift of the ocean”.

Italian photographer Marco Gualazzini, who became interested in photographing the continent to change Western attitudes about it, bagged second place with his photograph of a Somalian man carrying a dead hammerhead shark through the streets of Mogadishu.

The photograph struck a chord with this year’s contest jury members according to Wikimedia, but stories like this are far from new for him. “Telling the story of Somalia’s rebirth” is a story Gualazzini has committed to more than anything he’s covered in Africa over nearly a decade of photographing the continent, he says. Third place went to Cairo-based lawyer Hassan Elsayed.

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